house. His face was drawn into a heavy frown as he thrust open the door he came to, and he entered the room with a cough of magisterial importance. A tall, gaunt man, with stooping shoulders, rose to meet him, and the expression of Mr. Jervase's face changed as if by magic. Something of such a change had taken place between his looking in on the rustics assembled round his kitchen fire and his appearance amongst them. But now it was even swifter, and more pronounced.

'Why, General Boswell!' he cried. 'This is indeed an unexpected honour. I'm proud to see you, sir, beneath my 'umble roof. Jack Jervase wasn't a very distinguished servant of Her Majesty. He never held the Queen's commission, sir; but he fowt beneath his country's flag, and he'll always feel it an honour to welcome a superior officer of the sister arm.'

He said this with a laugh, and a roll of the head, as if to carry off by his own geniality any sense of presumption which might appear to lurk within his speech, and he bent low over the hand which was proffered to him.

The visitor's type was as pronouncedly English as John Jervase's own, and yet it could hardly have differed further from it if the two men had been inhabitants of planets strange to one another. John Jervase was British bourgeois from head to foot, and the General from crown to sole was an aristocrat. His very figure told the observer that, and the manly aquiline features and the mild, yet searching blue eye had never left an instant's doubt about it in the mind of any man. He was some six feet four in stature, and the slight stoop which sat upon his shoulders looked somehow as if it had been brought about by the innate courtesy of a man who could not refrain from bending to people of inferior stature. It scarcely detracted from the military character of his carriage, and, indeed, the General could stand up straight enough when he chose, as divers of the old incorrigibles who had been under his command in many climates knew full well. It was always a bad sign to one of these when he saw the General square his shoulders: and if, in addition to this, both hands were sent at the same time to twist the ends of the great drooping grey moustache, the old offender knew that his plight was serious indeed. Yet, for a grizzled old campaigner, who was now growing nigh to three score years, the General was marvellously mild and sweet in manner. His features, to be sure, were high, and in some of their signs a little harsh; but his mouth was very gentle in expression, and the large yet deepset eyes beamed with a kind simplicity. It was a common saying in his fighting days that Boswell's men would have followed him into hell. But children trusted and loved him at sight; and it was a pretty picture sometimes in his social hours to see him as the centre of a bevy of young girls—over whom he always seemed to exercise a perfectly unconscious fascination.

'You've been to town, Jervase, I understand,' said the General, 'What's the news there?'

'The news, sir,' said Mr. Jervase. 'The news, sir, has come at last, and by this time I suppose Her Majesty's forces have got their marching orders.'

'Do you mean it's war, Jervase?' cried the General.

'I mean it's war, sir,' Jervase answered. 'The latest news, before I came away, was that the Queen had sent a message to Parliament that negotiations with the Czar are broken off. The message goes on to say that Her Majesty relies upon her faithful subjects to protect the Sultan against the encroachments of Russia.'

His manners and his accent were alike more dignified than they had been when he addressed the rustic crowd. It could be seen that he had one manner for the kitchen and another for the parlour.

'At last!' said the General, half under his breath. 'At last! Well, everybody has seen it coming, and there——' he went on, turning upon his heel and speaking in a raised voice, 'there is your chance, Polson. You're a lucky dog, not even to have your commission from your agent's hands, and yet to be on the edge of the biggest campaign since Waterloo.'

A lad of three-and-twenty had risen from a seat in the corner of the room at the moment of John Jervase's entry. He had risen so hastily that he had overturned half a set of chessmen from the board on which he had been playing, into the lap of a pretty girl, his partner in the game; but he had listened so intently, from the General's first question, that he was unconscious of that slight mishap. He walked into the broader light which shone beneath the central lamp, and asked eagerly:

'There's no mistake about that, Dad? There's no mistake about it?'

The speaker was Jervase's son, as a stranger seeing them under the same roof would have been ready to swear at sight. He was taller than his father by a good four inches; and the family resemblance, striking as it was, did not pierce so deep as the expression of the face. The father's blunt features were softened in the boy's, and though the look of energy was there, it was altogether lifted and spiritualised—possibly, perhaps, by the intense feeling of the moment.

'And there'll be no mistake about my commission?' the young man asked. 'There's no fear of any delay, or any official nonsense?'

'I sent my cheque to the agent before I left the town,' his father answered, 'and I expect you'll get your call to boot and saddle within a day or two at the outside.'

The pretty girl who had been playing chess with the young man in the corner laid down the pieces which had fallen in her lap. She placed them on the board, with a meaningless precision, and looked straight before her with wide eyes, and a face which had slowly grown paler and more pale.

'Polson, my boy,' said the General, 'I congratulate you. You are a lucky fellow.' He held out his right hand, and as the young man grasped it, he laid his left upon his shoulder. 'They won't keep you long at the Depot,' he said, 'for a man who can shoot straight, and ride to hounds, is half a soldier already. God bless you, my lad. You'll do your duty well, I know.'

There was silence in the room, and the noise of the storm outside, which nobody had hitherto thought about, fell upon the ears of all four, as if it had not been a familiar tone for hours, but as if it had but awakened at that instant. They all stood listening, for by this time the girl also had risen from her seat, and had made an indeterminate movement forward towards the centre of the room. And out of the boom and thunder of the storm there suddenly came a wild clatter of horses' feet, and a heavy gate was heard to fall back upon its fastening. An instant later there was a mad tugging at the front door bell, and an insaner clatter at the knocker. Jervase himself rushed to answer this sudden and unexpected summons, and opening the door unguardedly, was blown back into the hall, from the walls of which every hanging picture and every garment were swept by the incoming blast, like leaves. It sounded as if the house were coming down.

A drenched, bareheaded figure staggered into the hall, wind-driven, and would have fallen had not Jervase clutched at it. The newcomer and the master of the house held on to each other, and Jervase panted hoarsely:

'You? What's the matter?' 'The matter?' said the new arrival. 'The matter's ruin!'

CHAPTER II

The clatter of the tumbling objects in the hall brought out the General and Jack Jervase's son. The girl peered with a whiter face than ever from the parlour doorway, and a fourth auditor came upon the scene in the person of an elderly woman in black satin and old lace, who rushed into the hall with frightened eyes and upraised hands, in time to hear the question and the answer.

To make clear what the question and the answer meant to the four people who heard them, I must go back a step.

Jack Jervase ran away from home when the nineteenth century was in its teens. He had left behind